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What Of The Mac In The Post-PC Era Of Mobile?

Semantics aside, it is difficult to argue that we are not in the post-PC era, the one heralded by Apple’s Steve Jobs when he introduced the original iPad in 2010.

Traditional PC sales, including the Mac, are going down, while new mobile devices– smartphones and tablets– are growing rapidly. In the post-PC era is the Mac beginning to fade away, a classy relic from the past?

We Hardly Knew Ye!

First, allow me to clear up the semantics. In the post-PC era, traditional personal computers, including the Mac and Windows PCs, either desktop or notebook, are defined as PCs.

Second, yes, an iPhone and an iPad, as with most modern smartphones and tablets, is merely a mobile personal computer.

This isn’t even a battle of traditional vs. mobile computing devices. Traditional PC sales are going down (including the Mac), while mobile computing device sales, as exemplified by iPhone and iPad, are going up.

Is the Mac on its way out? Yes, albeit slowly. The Mac is an important and highly profitable segment of Apple’s product line, but the handwriting is on the wall. Mac sales are down and likely to continue that trend for years.

The power and usability of the Mac is slowly, step-by-step, being transferred to Apple’s mobile devices. The iPhone could be considered a Mac in your pocket. The iPad is merely a larger iPhone but without the phone.

Increasingly, people who own a personal computer are not upgrading to the latest and greatest. Instead, they’re taking their computing tasks to their smartphones and tablets. Look at any Apple Store. Nearly everyday you’ll see a large table populated by former PC (and Mac) users, learning to use the iPad or iPhone instead.

A Non-Reversible Trend

It is unlikely the Mac, or the typical, traditional Windows PC, will die any time soon. There will be improvements in battery life, CPU power, graphics capability, storage capacity, and screen resolution– for years to come.

The move to mobile devices by the great unwashed masses of computing device users is a non-reversible trend. Already, smartphones and tablets of decent quality and capability cost less to manufacture and distribute than typical Macs or PCs.

At what point will their internal components begin to rise in price? It’s math. Larger screen, larger memory, larger battery, larger case means traditional Macs and PCs could eventually cost more than they do today, because the economy of scale is changing. Just as telephone land lines are shrinking in number as people move to cell phones, how long before households don’t have a Mac or a PC at all, functionality replaced by a number of mobile devices?

We will know the end has come when tablets and smartphones begin taking over advanced functionality currently handled by Mac and Windows PC. Is Adobe working on Creative Cloud apps for iPhone and iPad or Android devices? Certainly. Apple’s iCloud-based iWork apps– Pages, Numbers, Keynote– are accessible and useful without a Mac (or, a price tag, it seems).

Wherefore Art Thou, Microsoft?

The post-PC era is here already. It’s real. And it’s having a tremendous impact on the status quo. While Microsoft and PC makers owned the past 20 years with Windows-based computers, those same companies are completely absent in the rapidly growing mobile world.

Apple may have been a profitable niche player among PC makers, but the company may be the best positioned technology company to prosper in the post-PC era with hundreds of millions of loyal, satisfied customers. Microsoft, Dell, HP cannot say the same. Today, they represent the relics of a nearly bye-gone era.

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About Kate MacKenzie

I'm from Brooklyn, New York, used a Mac for more than 25 years, and have followed Apple since the last century. Read more of my articles here. My personal site, PixoBebo, is all about Apple. Follow me on Twitter.

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All the hype about mobile replacing PCs is just that, hype by the press. There are some jobs that are just so much easier on a PC (desk top or laptop) that they are very unlikely to ever be done on mobile. Anyone doing complex spreadsheets or writing will stick with a full up keyboard. I’ll bet the author didn’t try and write this article on a smart phone with her thumbs! I use both a laptop and a smart phone and like both for different reasons and for different tasks. Smartphones are just filling their market now so sales are up. Most people are not replacing their PC now because it has more than enough power and is doing everything they need done. Come up with a significant improvement to the PC and watch sales jump once again.

It’s not ‘hype.’ It’s math. It’s happening. What part about PC sales dropping didn’t you understand?

Smartphones and tablets are replacing the functionality of PCs (and Macs), so owners are not upgrading as frequently as in the past, hence lower PC sales. Except for workers tethered to their computers at work, more work is being done on smartphones and tablets.

Half of what I write for Mac360 and my own site, PixoBebo, is written on an iPad (with a Logitech Bluetooth keyboard) instead of my trusty MacBook Pro. The rest of what I write is divided between iPhone (good for quick entries with links), or the Mac, though my professional work is usually on a desktop iMac. The key to understanding the post-PC era is that how we use PCs is changing, and much (not most) of what once only capable of being done on a PC is now iPhone and iPad. That trend is not going to reverse itself. Mobile is here to stay.

To paraphrase a President who understood motivation, “It’s the Apps, Stupid!”

A smartphone is about as powerful as a six-to-eight year old laptop. If the overwhelming majority of Apps being developed today can be run on a six year old ‘PC’, what is the incentive to upgrade? If the old Microsoft Office does everything you need it to do, and if it runs just fine on your old ‘PC’, why upgrade either? Ditto, Microsoft Windows!

Thirty years ago, there was a concept called “the killer app”. This was an app so appealing, that it made people lust for a powerful computer. Visicalc was the App that transformed the Apple ][ from a hobby into a tool. WordPerfect enabled the IBM PC to make the IBM Selectric obsolete. CompuServe sold modems; Netscape made CompuServe obsolete. Wikipedia made Britannica obsolete. Lately, we have Amazon, eBay, FaceBook, Skype, Twitter, etc. These ‘social’ apps do not tax my computer’s CPU. Netflix does not tax my GPU. Only Professional Apps like ffmpeg, Mathematica, X-Code, etc. make me feel “the need… the need for speed!”

Maybe it’s time to revive another term from the eighties: ‘the workstation’. Don’t call the Mac Pro a ‘PC’, call it a workstation instead. That will help you understand the niche that it is designed to appeal to; a niche that may seem small compared to the mass consumer market, but a niche that is not going away. The MacBook Pro is a portable Mac Pro, a compromise for those that ‘need’ both power and portability. Then there is the iMac, a workstation appliance.

The one rumor I never read, is that Apple is developing a ProPad or a ProPod (ProPhone). Probably because they are not…yet; or maybe that is what the iCloud is for. .

This is shortsighted thinking. ‘Power’ isn’t important. Usability is important. The math also supports the ‘post-PC era’ paradigm. There are more smartphones and tablets being sold than traditional PCs. PCs dominated for decades, but they don’t dominate anymore (at least from the standpoint of sheer numbers). Only in the workplace do PCs maintain a semblance of their historic importance, and that, too is changing. Fast. Lots of iPads around the office these days, and road warriors, who once commanded a light and fast notebook, now get by with a smartphone and/or tablet. This era is for real, and stubborn holdouts are waiting for a new ‘killer app’ for a PC so sales will increase. It won’t happen. The traditional PC isn’t dead, of course, but it’s a relic of a bygone era, used increasingly less, and substantially less relevant than just a few years ago. Post-PC era, indeed.

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